Sara - Clockstone Studios

Entries by Sara

Sarah & Jen’s Spatula

Object #3
Interview Subject: Sarah & Jen
Object in Question: Spatula

This morning Zac and I had the great pleasure to see Sarah and Jen married. The ceremony was in a gazebo in a park a few blocks from their house; during their vows, the skies opened up and it began to rain in a circle around all of us. Afterwards, we walked to a local restaurant and ate and drank the afternoon away.

Before eating, we gave Sarah and Jen their object: a handmade spatula, flexible and curved to fit the hand. Here’s Zac’s overview of the making process:

So, what to make for a couple that loves to cook? There’s a whole world of possible kitchen accessories, appliances, and tools, but what can be made in under 8 hours, with little tooling or materials cost?

Hand tools seemed to be the answer, something simple but elegant and effective for cooking or serving. Coincidentally, Cooks’ Illustrated had just done a special on that most basic of cooking tools, the spatula. They concluded that this:

the Wusthof Gourmet Turner Fish Spatula was the “best” spatula. Catchy name, right? But it’s got a thin, flexible blade that’s sturdy enough to flip heavy items, and an angled edge that’s handy for scraping pans and getting into the corners of pots.

So in designing a spatula for Jen & Sarah, I based the shape on this and tried to figure out how to make it relatively quickly and easily. The numerous slender slots were out, as was the riveted resin handle. The blade material, stainless spring steel, is readily available and can be worked with most metalworking tools – the challenge was making a dime-thin piece of steel feel comfortable in the hand with no added handle. In working out a design, it’s always easier to use paper or cardboard to start with – in this case green oaktag from an old file folder. The designs evolved from top to bottom – a 2.5″ wide strip of spring steel with an angled scraping edge and a 90° twist in the handle to give a rounded gripping surface.

Unfortunately spring steel is, well, springy. It’s the stuff watch springs are made of, as hard as an average knife blade, with a definite dislike for bending. It comes in 5′ long strips, coiled and tied, with a large warning tag. Cutting those bands sent the strip dancing merrily across the shop floor as it straightened out in a matter of seconds. How, then, to bend it?

Enter a recent Craigslist find – a kick press from the boonies. Originally set up to punch oblong holes in thick plastic, it’s rated for 5 tons (a little optimistically, I think) and has a nice tall space for tooling.

Those 5 tons of pressure, exerted over a fairly small area, can quite easily bend spring steel given the proper tooling. This might not be quite the proper tooling, but it could be made quickly with what I had on hand – some small channel & a few pieces of scrap steel.

And with a few measured kicks, it can make fairly nice bends in the springiest steel.

So, tooling taken care of, now to cut out the blank.

And with a little grinding & punching, it’s looking less like a piece of debris & more like a kitchen utensil.

And with a few kicks of the press and some cutting and grinding – cameras and steel dust don’t get along, so unfortunately no pictures – it’s looking like a real spatula.

And it even looks at home in a pan! Hopefully Jen & Tyler will like it! They’ve promised to send pictures of it in use – we can’t wait to see them.

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: 5 Comments

The 500 Hammers Project: Interview with Sarah & Jen

Interview #3
Interview Subject: Sarah & Jen
Object in Question: Surprise!

This is a somewhat special 500 Hammers interview…while when we started this project by approaching people we thought might be interested in participating, we did so very openly. But in this particular case, we kept it a secret. All I told my friends Sarah and Jen was that I’d like to see them, and I wanted their help with something special.

Sarah and Jen have been friends of mine for over four years. (Sometime not on this blog, ask about the hilariously awkward date Jen and I went on once.) They have also warmly welcomed Clockstone Studios owner Zac into their home and friendship, with an ease and grace that is one of their most distinct qualities. They are puppy-owning, mild and quirky ladies who call each other “ma’am,” like staying in to cook, and love feeding their guests. Seriously, if they ever invite you for dinner, go.

Their placement in this week of our project is very deliberate. About a month ago, an unexpected email showed up in my inbox. In it, Sarah and Jen laid out a plan that I think a lot of their friends knew was coming, though none of us expected it so quickly and I can confidently say that all of us are moved and thrilled to be invited.

This Sunday, August 1st, Sarah and Jen are getting married. When I went to see them on Friday, Sarah commented to me that she felt odd inviting friends whom they have not seen in many months, as though such an out of the blue invitation would be seen as rude, coming on the heels of such a long silence.

I confess, I laughed. “Your friends love you,” I said. “We want to celebrate with you. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we all hung out.”

That night they cooked: pasta with bacon and snap peas, a thin egg sauce that cooked in contact with the hot noodles, thrown together in a wok at the last minute. Utterly delicious, surprisingly subtle. Their Bisson terrier sat in my lap as we caught up. These women are the sorts of people who lose themselves in their lives, so sometimes we go months without seeing one another. But in the end, it’s always all right, in the way that sometimes friendships carry through long periods of silence without anyone even noticing the lapse.

Jen has just graduated from massage school and is about to begin her search for a new job, having left her old one just in time to relax before their big day. Sarah was sent to a conference last week by her job, and we traded stories about business trips and corporate culture.

They cooked around one another, Jen making salad while Sarah directed the pasta and mixing of ingredients, delicate balances of warm and cold dishes. The pasta was homemade, but perfectly rolled and cut. As it turns out, they told me, they bought a pasta roller after finding the recipe for the homemade pasta online and realizing how amazing it was. They decided they needed a way to be able to make it all the time…

This is a somewhat short interview, because we’re trying something new this week: the object we’ll be making for Sarah and Jen is a surprise. Partially a surprise for them (it is a wedding gift, after all) and partially a surprise for us. We hope that this project will give us a chance to interpret the characters and needs of the people we interview no matter what they ask us to create for them – even if they ask for nothing at all. Feel free to guess, or even make suggestions.

Sarah and Jen, thank you for all the great meals, thank you for inviting us into your home time and again, and thank you for generally being wonderful people. We can’t wait to see you this weekend and share your celebration.

Congratulations!

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: No Comments

Jack’s Rack

Object #2
Interview Subject: Jack Stratton
Object in Question: Tie Rack

Zac’s photos of this project make it look so gorgeous that when I opened the email with these photos I actually clapped. Here’s his maker’s interview:

In designing Jack’s rack, I was drawn to two comments he made in the interview – about connecting with something mechanical/physical, and about the tools of printing past:

“Maybe just that most of the tools I find useful in life are electronic and/or virtual and it would be nice to connect with something mechanical/physical…

“As well when I was learning design I was fascinated and in love with lead type, rulers, printing presses, etc. I am still drawn to the tools of printing past.”

Inspired by his drawing – and having independently arrived at the same 72 linear inches of tie space that he’d specified there (yes folks, that’s six feet of ties) – I set out to hang four 18″ rods at an angle from the wall. The rack as drawn was hinged to the wall so ties could be hung and arranged more easily, but as the single curved wire still wouldn’t have made for easy access, I’ve replaced it with a single upright and four horizontal crossbars. Considering the fact that Jack’s a graphic designer, the crossbars slide in the uprights and lock with a setscrew so he can arrange them in any way he pleases (though, as in all things, some modicum of balance is advisable). As New York apartments are not known for being spacious, it made sense to allow for the rack to fold down flat to the wall, so the ties could become the “design element” he had in mind while staying physically unobtrusive. (I’m curious if he’ll do this, actually – it runs the risk of leaving creases in the ties, but it’d be really cool.) In order for the rack to stand away from the wall, there had to be a prop of some kind, which had to fold or move somehow to let it sit flat. This led to the development of the neat little mechanism you’ll see below – a nicely ergonomic, decidedly physical detail that harkens back to the era of printing presses and connection with mechanical tools.

Most of the parts laid out, ready to test-fit. Sadly, I managed to leave my camera at home yesterday, so there aren’t any pictures of the earlier steps – most of it was drilling the bar and shaping the brackets and wall prop:

All the parts assembled, with the crossbars in one possible arrangement:

Here’s most of the shaping that went into the rack – the brackets on the left were ground from scrap angle iron, the upright was hexagonal steel scrap creatively milled, drilled, and filed, and the prop’s a section of salvaged bus bar sawn to shape.

The key linkage that lifts the prop is simple in theory – it just passes through the upright, drops down to lock the rack when it’s pulled away from the wall, and lifts when you press the key on the end. Getting that to work in steel and copper takes a couple tries with cardboard first. The real pivot pin is at the bottom, along with the broken Dremel bit I was using for a test pivot.

The key assembled, marked for final shaping:

The hinge, assembled but not yet welded:

All the parts, some of the tools, and a giant box o’ setscrews. Plus a cheapie Ikea allen wrench I found to send along to Jack to really make this a kit:

The finished key, shaped and polished, with a roll pin pivot.

The finished rack, standing up from the table, with the crossbars in another possible orientation.

Finished & temporarily hung up with pushpins. Here the prop’s down and the key is raised – to fold the rack to the wall, just press down on the key and lower the rack.

Laying flat against the wall, with the crossbars in one possible arrangement:

Lift the rack up to thirty degrees from the wall, the prop drops down, and the rack locks up.

It can also be lifted through 90° to let ties hang down freely for selecting or rearranging. You can see the setscrews on the back of the upright.

Closeup of the wall plate/hinge:

Side view of the wall prop (with a little bit of plastic at the end so it doesn’t mark up the wall):

Close-up of the handle and the key/prop lever:

Thanks for interviewing with us, Jack! The tie rack was an opportunity for us to see another potential side of The 500 Hammers project…8 hours (the maximum time that Clockstone Studios will commit to one of our free objects) can make a relatively simple object, but it can also generate things that are very elaborate and unique. A tie rack (easily re-creatable, if you’re interested) will sell for $140 through our typical ordering process.

We’ve had a lot of interest in the project so far, and really appreciate all of the linking and good comments!

And speaking of comments…we’ve got an interview coming tomorrow with two of my favorite people in the world, but after that our 4th interview slot is up for grabs. Do you want it? Email us!

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: 1 Comment

Hair Spirals in Action!

Nina’s hair is a much better example of how hair spirals can rock with curls…She took photos in the park:

Then over the weekend she came over and we did another snapshot:

Pictures of Jack’s rack are coming tonight! Here’s a sneak preview:

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: No Comments

The 500 Hammers Project: Interview with Jack

Interview #2
Interview Subject: Jack Stratton
Object in Question: Tie Rack

Welcome to the second interview of The 500 Hammers Project, a weekly interview and creation process designed to highlight how useful, specific objects and tools can influence and improve our daily lives.

This week we talked to Jack Stratton. I asked Jack tonight how he’d like us to describe him in this interview.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head with a characteristic half-smile. “In glowing terms?”

“As in, you’re glowing?”

“Well, there was that one time….” When you speak to Jack, you will notice that he can laugh and then become immediately serious, with no transition at all. “Well, you know, suave, debonaire…man about town sort.”

I laughed. “That works.”

On his blog, full of delicious erotica often featuring girls in knee socks, Jack self-identifies as a writer, kinkster, New Yorker & bon vivant. On his Twitter stream, he sums it up more succinctly: “Simply put, I’m terribly demanding and most of my demands are simply terrible.”

When we thought of Jack for this project, both Zac and I immediately thought of tie racks. For Jack Stratton, ladies’ man, man’s man, man about town, is rarely seen without one of his (increasingly vast) collection of ties. Once he showed up at a social engagement in a Batman t-shirt and the whole island of Manhattan shook.

Jack is also a graphic designer, which means that as soon as we invited him onto the project my email started filling with sketches; first of a clever finger knife, then of elaborate scissors, then finally of a tie rack (a conclusion he arrived at completely independently of us, because life is weird that way.)

He spoke about his design work in our written interview as well. Without further ado:

What’s your relationship with tools? Any specific tools or very useful objects that you use on a day to day basis?

I have a very strong connection to the tools in my life, but most of my tools are virtual, being a somewhat technical sort of man these days in a very technical field. My razor, in the morning, is certainly a tool for grooming. My French press. At work I use computers, I’m a graphic designer. I also use x-actos and various fine razors for cutting up papers and making mockups of things.

I can’t even begin to tell you the painstaking way I set up, maintain and diagnose my computers at work and at home. The way I set up the icons on my screen, the way I design data backup protocols, everything is as meticulous as time allows. It all makes me very happy.

As well when I was learning design I was fascinated and in love with lead type, rulers, printing presses, etc. I am still drawn to the tools of printing past.

When we asked you to be a part of this project, you immediately jumped to either a knife or a tie rack. (Funny thing, we were thinking of a tie rack too.) Why those two things in particular?

Well, I’ve been looking for a tie rack for a while now and none of them have really caught my eye. Right now I’m keeping my many (30someodd) ties in a drawer and this is not ideal in any way. My ties mean a lot to me and I’d love to have them displayed not only so I can see them and select the one that fits my mood that day, but so they become a design element of my bedroom.

The knife or knifelike thing I have dreamed up is something that’s fascinated me for a while now. Something beautiful and unique that I could use both to cut things when I design at home and maybe in some more kinky ways. Knives are sexy and can bring together the somewhat divergent emotions of smooth sultry eroticism and blood chilling fear. I have been thinking about playing with that more.

The perspective I have on you is that ties are very much a deliberate element of your gender presentation and identity. Can you speak to that?

For a long time I dressed very plainly. I never really had a strong male role-model in my life and so I was a bit unsure of how to “act like a man,” so to speak. In my late twenties I really started examining my gender and how I presented myself to the world in many ways. I made a conscious choice to dress better, wear suits more, wear ties almost all the time and I soon became fixated on all the little affectations of that certain genre of masculinity.

Ties, cufflinks, collar stays, fancy dress shirts, suits, all of these things became things that both helped me manicure the way I looked to fit how I felt inside and give me a bevy of little accoutrements to obsess over.

Ties out of all of these things have been my hallmark and my fetish.

Do you practice any personal rituals? Any relevant you could share with us?

I suppose dressing in the morning is a bit ritualistic. Showering, shaving, cologne, picking what to wear. I’ve become more conscious of the whole routine and I enjoy it a lot more now.

Certainly sexually there are certain things that have become ritual. The way a BDSM scene can sometimes be measured and paced and follow an order that I’d thought about in advance. Certainly the tying and untying of someone and the way I treat my rope is the closest I get to meditation at times. Kinbaku, the Japanese art of bondage, is a very prescribed and ritualistic act in many ways. I’m drawn to that.

Anything to add?

Not really. Maybe just that most of the tools I find useful in life are electronic and/or virtual and it would be nice to connect with something mechanical/physical.

Then, a few days later when Zac and I started in on planning the tie rack, I asked him for design ideas. Maybe I should have known better, from a graphic designer? Here’s what we got:

Well Jack…that I think we can do for you.

Thanks for reading, all! We’ll be back on Sunday with Jack’s Rack.

P.S. I could have posted a picture of Jack’s face, but then I realized that the file name of this image (his Twitter icon) is “badass.jpg.” And that, my friends, is awesome.

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: No Comments

Nina’s Hair Spirals

Object #1
Interview Subject: Nina Lourie
Object in Question: Hair Spirals

This Thursday Zac sent Nina’s hair spirals along to her in New York! Here’s a snapshot of the process he went through and the finished product; a maker’s interview, if you will:

Hair spirals – surprisingly difficult to describe, surprisingly simple when seen. They’re like giant, loosely wound conical springs:

Winding springs is easy – just wrap wire around the right size rod. If you taper that rod, you can wind conical springs – to a point. Once the taper gets too steep or the spring too loosely wound, it’ll slip right off the mandrel, just like trying to tie a rope around the top of a pyramid.

The solution is to make a mandrel with steps that keep the wire in place. This one was made out of a chunk of 4×4 pine too short to do anything else with.

Turning the cone on the lathe was easy, but marking and cutting the steps took many tries with a Sharpie and a steady hand with a die grinder & round burr.

I had some annealed stainless wire in the scrap drawer which was soft enough to wind around the mandrel by hand and just about thick enough to hold its shape through steady use and abuse as a hair accessory (If I make more of these for Nina or anyone else, I’d start with thicker wire, but this is what was on hand). A quick zap with the TIG welder on both ends of the spiral gives nicely balled ends that’ll hopefully help give the spirals some friction in hair.

Sets of hair spirals, sanded & ready to wear!

Zac made three extra spirals, so this weekend we took some demo photos:

Because my hair is shorter than Nina’s, I like using three spirals. The extra one on top locks in the short bits of hair:

Nina, thank you so much for being our very first interview! We heart you and we hope you love your spirals, and that they go over fabulously at your office.

If anyone else would like to order a pair (or threesome) of spirals, drop Zac an email at zac@clockstonestudios.com. And yes, when you get them you can ask for a tutorial on how to put them in. We’re thinking they’ll be $6 each, so $12 for a pair and $18 for three. I’d personally recommend you get three if your hair is at your shoulders – for longer hair, a pair should work just fine.

Tomorrow we’ll be posting next week’s interview, which is with Jack Stratton of Writing Dirty. Yay!

P.S. Sorry, it looks like we’re fresh out of ponies.

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: 5 Comments

Introducing the 500 Hammers Project! Interview with Nina

Interview #1
Interview Subject: Nina Lourie
Object in Question: Hair Spirals

Welcome to the first interview of The 500 Hammers Project, a weekly interview and creation process designed to highlight how useful, specific objects and tools can influence and improve our daily lives.

Our first interview subject, Nina Lourie, is a 20-something woman from New York who’s just started a new job at the Macmillan publishing company. She likes Irish dance music, hard cider, sexy musicians, fiddling with her napkins, ponies, kittens and lots of fabric in her clothing. (She didn’t tell me all of those things in our interview; I’ve known her over 5 years now.)

Nina works just down the road from me, so when I offered to interview her as our first subject for The 500 Hammers Project, we made plans for lunch. When it came time to meet up, however, at the bottom of Madison Square Park, I turned in circles for 10 minutes before giving up and calling her.

“Where ARE you?” I asked. A girl in a blue button down, a short grey skirt and a tight bun stood up from a bench not 20 feet from where I was standing, and as I caught her eye I laughed. I was looking for her hair. With it up in a bun and my tunnel vision, she blended right into the scenery.

Nina’s hair, as seen in her lovely photo, above, is the kind of brilliant red that makes your eyes burn if you see it in the sunlight. In her own words, when I asked about it over our Cuban food, “It’s all the way down my back at this point, maybe all the way to my bum.” (She’s English, by the way.)

For our first project, Clockstone Studios has offered to make Nina a pair of hair spirals, mostly because she’s dropped about a dozen hints so far as to how much she OMGWANTS them. But when I sat down and started to plan her interview, I had utterly no idea how to explain what a hair spiral is. So I asked her:

They’re spirals that hold up your hair by twisting into it instead of clasping it. They don’t do that clasping thingy where your hair is pulled by a single point of tension. Hard to describe, but they’re an easy way to create a nice, neat, classier look. You’ll edit this to make me sound more intelligent, right?

Okay, that’s a bit unfair. But hair spirals are a hard concept to master in words. Two pieces of heavy wire are twisted into shallow, cone-shaped spirals. The ends are finished, and the two pieces are twisted together through an uplifted bun to lock together, consequently holding one’s hair in place. Don’t worry; we’ll post pictures.

When I asked Nina about being a part of this project, she let me know that now was actually the perfect time for her; she’s just started a new job and is facing the challenge of wrangling her typical style of dress into something that works for her new office:

I need to find a way to take what I have now and keep that interesting, artistic look but still have a great deal of professionalism. The challenge is with fuck-off long hair, what do I do with it every day? I don’t like putting it up in a low bun that does nothing for me…the temptation is to leave it down, and I feel very much like something out of a fantasy print with all of my long locks flowing around me – but that just doesn’t work.

You’ve talked about how you’re now needed to adapt your style. Where did that style come from originally?

Hmm…probably it started because I spend so much time around theatre people, and because I spent so many years as a costumer, so I’m very influenced by that artsy style. I like nontraditional cuffs, bell sleeves, big flowing skirts…

And how’s that working for you now that you’re in an office?

It’s an interesting transition! My office isn’t all suits, but I do need to appear more grown up. I’m much, much younger than the people I work with.

Anything else?

My styles very influenced by my friends – that’s why I want the hair spirals, because [our friend] Gina has something very like them. I see things on a rack that I would never touch, but then one of my friends wears it and all of a sudden I’m thinking “Oh say, that’s actually really interesting – stunning, even.”

Our food came in the middle of the conversation, and I discovered that Nina had bent the straw for my lemonade into a full circle. “I can’t help it!” she laughed, “I have to fiddle!” And that’s true; one of my strongest images of Nina is from a few summers ago, when I found her sitting on a couch twirling one long lock of hair around her finger over and over and over again.

Last question: So what’s your new job, then?

Ha! Good question. Well, I work for Macmillan, but they’re not exactly sure of who I am yet. My title’s basically “Digital Piracy Associate.” Most of my work is to try and reinvent MacMillan’s policy on e-books so that they can continue to be profitable.

Thanks again, Nina! Come Sunday, we’ll post pretty pretty pictures of your new hair spirals. Hopefully they will put the question of what-exactly-these-things-are to rest.

Also we will include ponies.

Author name:: Sara
Discussion:: 2 Comments